"But although life is not energy, any more than it is matter, yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter"
About this Quote
Lodge is trying to smuggle agency back into a universe newly enchanted by thermodynamics. By conceding up front that life is neither "energy" nor "matter", he signals allegiance to mainstream physics; he won’t be caught preaching crude vitalism. Then he pivots: life "directs" energy. That verb is the whole game. Energy is conserved, yes, but its pathways aren’t inevitable. A steam engine and a bomb obey the same accounting, yet one powers a city while the other levels it. Lodge is carving out a conceptual loophole: even if life doesn’t add to the ledger of physics, it can still be the accountant who decides where the money goes.
The subtext is late-Victorian anxiety dressed as scientific restraint. By 1900, physics had made matter and energy feel like the only serious currencies, while Darwinism made purpose look like a sentimental add-on. Lodge, a physicist with a strong investment in psychical research and a more porous boundary between science and metaphysics than today’s gatekeepers allow, wants "control" without violating conservation laws. He’s offering a respectable vocabulary for saying: mind matters.
Context matters too: this is the era when "information" and "organization" didn’t yet have the formal status they would later gain in biology and computing. Lodge’s intuition anticipates a modern distinction between raw power and patterning - not life as a substance, but life as a coordinating principle. It’s persuasive because it flatters physics while refusing its reductionist swagger, insisting that arrangement is not an afterthought but the stage where meaning and consequence actually happen.
The subtext is late-Victorian anxiety dressed as scientific restraint. By 1900, physics had made matter and energy feel like the only serious currencies, while Darwinism made purpose look like a sentimental add-on. Lodge, a physicist with a strong investment in psychical research and a more porous boundary between science and metaphysics than today’s gatekeepers allow, wants "control" without violating conservation laws. He’s offering a respectable vocabulary for saying: mind matters.
Context matters too: this is the era when "information" and "organization" didn’t yet have the formal status they would later gain in biology and computing. Lodge’s intuition anticipates a modern distinction between raw power and patterning - not life as a substance, but life as a coordinating principle. It’s persuasive because it flatters physics while refusing its reductionist swagger, insisting that arrangement is not an afterthought but the stage where meaning and consequence actually happen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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